Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due to ivory poaching • Hacker News Board

Re: Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due to ivory poaching

#251

Post by sillysaurusx » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 2:33 AM UTC

Ansil849 wrote: post #245

sillysaurusx wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listen. You're right. There, I gave you validation. But you're not going to change anyone's mind. So what's the point? Remember, the primary purpose of HN is entertainment (intellectual gratification). Internalizing this helped me break the habit of making such arguments "just to be right." I'll throw it back at you: Yes, I just ate two pork steaks. I have two more in the fridge. In fact, I'd personally murder a fami…

> In fact, I'd personally murder a family of pigs if it was the only way I'd ever be able to eat pork steaks again. They're that delicious, and I am that selfish. > Life isn't nice. It's brutal, short, and sprinkled with periods of happiness and ecstasy. It's always been that way, and it'll be that way long after we're gone. Then I assume you similarly have no issue with poaching, for all the same reasons?

The point is, it's irrelevant whether I personally have an issue with poaching or not. What if I sit here and say "Not only do I not have an issue with poaching, but I personally went on a rhino hunt last year and scored myself two kills"?

Your conversation is having effects on the site, and it's important to think about those effects. You probably feel the effects are positive. But angering all the meat eaters (which are numerous) changes nothing. The outcome before and after your thread is the same, except now a lot of people are unhappy. If you're not careful, your devil's advocate streak will come to an end, because (much to my dismay) unhappy people will email complaints about you to the people who run the site, and they'll go "Oh, yes, this is off-topic; in fact, they've been posting quite a lot of off-topic things." Then they'll press a button which either sinks your comments to the bottom, limits you from posting more than 5 comments every 3 hours, and other various unpleasant behavior modification techniques. I've experienced them all. If you want to experience them, then off-topic subthreads that make a lot of people unhappy is an excellent way.

I'll leave you to it. Perhaps you'll get lucky and fly under the radar now that HN is another order of magnitude larger. But your lucky streak won't last forever; sooner or later, if you keep calling people insufferable douchebags (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28984926) or leaving generic political comments about America (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28982669) or bringing up tangents about race (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28979634) or trying to imply that everyone who has a problem with poaching should also stop eating meat, well...

You clearly have a lot to offer conversations. For me, it helped to channel my intellectual curiosity side, rather than my "pointing out how terrible society is" side. It made me happier in the long run, too. Hopefully you'll have a long run.

Re: Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due to ivory poaching

#252

Post by 8note » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 2:35 AM UTC

abruzzi wrote: post #59

tombert wrote: post #8

Honest question from someone who knows virtually nothing about chemistry or material science: is there a difference in quality between synthetic and natural ivory? If not, why is poaching even still a viable market?

as an amateur pianist, I've played pianos with and without ivory keys, and the feel of ivory is a bit better. I'm not sure why, but it seems like it doesn't get as slick from sweat as you play. Of course, piano keys are not the cause of current ivory demand to the best of my knowledge, and I'll happily take non-ivory keys.

Is that comparing ivory wth plastic keys, or ivory with some synthetic version of ivory?

Re: Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due to ivory poaching

#253

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 2:38 AM UTC

mysterydip wrote: post #53

What if unicorns at one point existed, but were hunted for the superstitious power of their horns, leaving only the hornless to reproduce and eventually eliminate the gene? How would we know?

[deleted]

Re: Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due to ivory poaching

#254

Post by gwerbret » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 2:40 AM UTC

jsnell wrote: post #12

In case anyone is wondering about the size of the effect, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/wildlife-... has the numbers. Before the war, 2-4% of female elephants were tuskless. Now 32% of newly born ones are. So it's a significant change, but it's not like this property was coming out of nowhere. It started off about as common as humans having green eyes.

The first figure of the paper they reference [0] has the numbers for this study:

-- 18.5% of females were tuskless before the war

-- 50.9% of females were tuskless after the war

-- 33% of females were tuskless in the first post-war generation

Of the offspring:

-- 8.7% of females born to two-tusked females were two-tusked

-- 44.7% of females born to tuskless females were tuskless

[0]: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abe7389#F1

Re: Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due to ivory poaching

#255

Post by klodolph » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 2:46 AM UTC

selcuka wrote: post #229

klodolph wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be unintentional, but it is still artificial.

Define "artificial".

Oof, that's a tall order, isn't it? I'm no professional philosopher, and not somebody who works all day making dictionary definitions, but the general sense of natural / artificial here is "not by humans" versus "by humans", although that's not very precise and you'll get into trouble if you read too much into much into it. There are loads of ways in which you'd need to refine this definition in order to account for various exceptions (due to convention) or the ways in which the sense is incompletely explained (e.g. it would be "natural" for me to drink water, but "artificial" to manufacture sunglasses).

Words like "natural" and "artificial" don't admit tidy definitions, and you know that, which is why you demanded that I define it for you, presumably so you could poke holes in whatever definition I provided.

Re: Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due to ivory poaching

#256

Post by 19f191ty » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 2:50 AM UTC

TehCorwiz wrote: post #151

mulmen wrote: post #148

Is this actually evolution or just selective breeding? By killing elephants with tusks the poachers are favoring elephants with the no-tusk gene. This isn't a lot different than killing a dog that bites sheep, which is how we bred herding dogs. Or a wolf that eats your baby, which is how we domesticated dogs. This trait already existed so it certainly wasn't "engineered due to mass poaching for ivory" as claimed.

Evolution IS selective breeding. The members of a species most fit for their environment are successful in procreation. The female elephants without tusks are surviving at higher rates which is resulting in more offspring with no tusks. This causes a shift in the population where a trait previously with no or little benefit becomes advantageous and the shift in genetic makeup of the whole population evolves.

Selective breeding is an important component of evolution. But evolution is certainly not just selective breeding. Population diversity whether it's through random chance, genetic drift, horizontal transfer etc. is also a key component of evolution. Equating evolution with just selective breeding is incorrect.

Re: Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due to ivory poaching

#257

Post by jwhitlark » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 2:58 AM UTC

ricktdotorg wrote: post #139

Spivak wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are animals and predators like any other in this situation.

Why downvote parent? A human is a "natural" predator just with different methods of attack/more intelligence than "animals". Why is a human predator (an "apex predator" if you will) any less "natural" than a T-Rex? Or any other animal that forced evolutionary change?

Because of civilization. While the word "artificial" is certainly overloaded, this is basically what we've designated the word to mean. That's not to say a human couldn't be a "natural" predator, if you assumed an isolated tribe, but that's certainly not what's happening here. If we call this natural, there is no longer any meaning you can ascribe to artificial.

Re: Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due to ivory poaching

#258

Post by mannykannot » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 3:02 AM UTC

mfer wrote: post #182

jawarner wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is evolution, and that's generally how evolution works. There is some diversity in a population, and natural selection promotes some traits over others.

Looking at definitions in dictionaries I don’t see this. What am I missing? Honest question. There are no new species and there is no change to genetic code

There is something here that is much more general than this particular issue: dictionary definitions of scientific concepts (and those in many other fields) are merely summaries, and far from being the last word on the matter (you can't learn quantum mechanics from a dictionary.)

It is not uncommon, in forums like HN, for there to be arguments over the 'true' definition of a word, but unless the issue being debated is lexicographical, these arguments are usually missing the point. While it is the case that the teaching of a subject often begins with some definitions, that is only the beginning, and it is usually done to shortcut the difficult process by which those definitions came to be written in the first place. On reflection, it should be clear that the definitions cannot be written (or, at least, finalized) until after we have gained an understanding of that which we are defining.

What we are observing here is the selection part of evolution. We did not observe the origination of the mutation causing the trait being acted on by selection, but it is empirically established that it is not uncommon for such mutations to occur. Nor have we seen it play out fully, where the trait, and the mutation causing it, become ubiquitous, and other alleles disappear (if the selection pressure continues and the species does not become extinct.) Here, we are observing evolution in progress, not its ultimate result.

This change alone will not create a new species, but if enough changes occur that the descendants could not, in principle, breed successfully with their ancestors, then it has. We can see a precursor to this in the mutation being lethal in males.

Re: Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due to ivory poaching

#259

Post by unmole » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 3:02 AM UTC

Stevvo wrote: post #232

jbay808 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Further to your point, I read elsewhere that the base rate in captivity is closer to 0.5%.

Human behavior probably has the opposite effect in captive elephants. If a captive elephant is born without tusks then the Mahout is going to kill it rather than invest in rearing an animal that has much reduced utility and will not yield healthy offspring.

Elephants are not really bread in captivity.

Re: Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due to ivory poaching

#260

Post by TameAntelope » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 3:02 AM UTC

19f191ty wrote: post #256

TehCorwiz wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evolution IS selective breeding. The members of a species most fit for their environment are successful in procreation. The female elephants without tusks are surviving at higher rates which is resulting in more offspring with no tusks. This causes a shift in the population where a trait previously with no or little benefit becomes advantageous and the shift in genetic makeup of the whole population evolves.

Selective breeding is an important component of evolution. But evolution is certainly not just selective breeding. Population diversity whether it's through random chance, genetic drift, horizontal transfer etc. is also a key component of evolution. Equating evolution with just selective breeding is incorrect.

For what it's worth, he could have said "Selective breeding IS evolution" and his comment would read the same. The point is that selective breeding is a subset of evolution, so attempting to ask, "Isn't this just selective breeding?" would be answered with a, "No, because selective breeding is a subset of evolution."

"Is this a rectangle or just a square?" "A square IS a rectangle."